Chicken Soup for the Soul

Just One More Time 
There's a 19th-century English novel set in a small Welsh town in which 
every year for the past 500 years the people all gather in church on 
Christmas Eve and pray. Shortly before midnight, they light candle 
lanterns and, singing carols and hymns, they walk down a country path 
several miles to an old abandoned stone shack. There they set up a 
creche scene, complete with manger. And in simple piety, they kneel 
and pray. Their hymns warm the chilly December air. Everyone in town 
capable of walking is there. 
There is a myth in that town, a belief that if all citizens are present on 
Christmas Eve, and if all are praying with perfect faith, then and only 
then, at the stroke of midnight, the Second Coming will be at hand. And 
for 500 years they've come to that stone ruin and prayed. Yet the 
Second Coming has eluded them. 
One of the main characters in this novel is asked, "Do you believe that 
He will come again on Christmas Eve in our town?" 
"No," he answers, shaking his head sadly, "no, I don't." 
"Then why do you go each year?" he asked. 
"Ah," he says smiling, "what if I were the only one who wasn't there 
when it happened?" 
Well, that's very little faith he has, isn't it? But it is some faith. As it 
says in the New Testament, we need only have faith as small as a grain 
of mustard seed to get into the Kingdom of Heaven. And sometimes, 
when we work with disturbed children, at-risk youth, troubled teens, 
alcoholic or abusive or depressed and suicidal partners, friends or 
clients ... it is at those moments that we need that small bit of faith that 
kept that man coming back to the stone ruin on Christmas Eve. Just one 
more time. Just this next time, perhaps I'll make the breakthrough then. 
We sometimes are called upon to work with people for whom others 
have abandoned all hope. Perhaps we have even come to the conclusion 
that there's no possibility of change or growth. It's at that time that, if we 
can find the tiniest scrap of hope, we may turn the corner, achieve a 
measurable gain, save someone worth saving. Please go back, my 
friend, just this one more time. 
Hanoch McCarty 

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